An "(Un)Easy Alliance – Thinking the Environment with Deleuze|Guattari

In her seminal study Bodies that Matter (1992), Judith Butler stated that
"some have argued that a rethinking of 'nature' as a set of dynamic
interrelations suits both feminist and ecological aims (and has for some
produced an otherwise unlikely alliance with the work of Gilles Deleuze."
While Deleuze and Feminist Theory (Ed. Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook.
Edinburgh UP 2000) can be read as an answer to the first 'unlikely alliance'
in Butler's claim, a likewise response to the second one – the alliance
Deleuze and ecology – is as yet missing. Butler's statement links with Luc
Ferry's critique in The New Ecological Order (1993), in which he accuses
French philosophers such as Deleuze, Guattari, and Serres of an
'anti-humanist' stance which, according to Ferry, amounts to nothing less
than a thinly-disguised 'new fascism.' For a neo-liberal humanist like
himself, "it is insane to treat animals, beings of nature and not of
freedom, as legal subjects. We consider it self-evident that only the latter
are, so to speak, 'worthy of trial." Privileging the question of 'legal
status,' Ferry by-passes the more pressing problematics of what it means to
be 'human' and 'free' if these categories cannot anymore be grounded in an
essentialist and clear-cut separation of nature and culture, nature and
'man,' human and non-human, as the work of Deleuze and Guattari – in both
their individual and collective works suggest: "we make no distinction
between man and nature: the human essence of nature and the natural essence
of man become one within nature in the form of production or industry ...
man and nature are not like two opposite terms confronting each other – not
even in the sense of bipolar opposites within a relationship of causation,
ideation, or expression (cause and effect, subject and object, etc.); rather
they are one and the same essential reality, the producer-product"
(Anti-Oedipus 4-5).
This book project aims at addressing the vacancy of a critical engagement
with the (un)likely alliance between the work of Deleuze, Guattari [and
Deleuze/Guattari] and environmental/ecological studies. Possible topics –
favorably but not necessarily linked to an American Studies context – might
include but are not limited to

- Nonorganic Life – Environment and the 'Non-Human' in|of Nature
- Deleuze|Guattari and|versus Radical|Deep Ecology
- Deleuze – Spinozist Ethology|Ecology – Arne Naess
- Guattari and the Three Ecologies
- Chaosmosis|Ecosophy – A General 'Science of Ecosystems'
- The New Alliance and the Natural Contract (Deleuze|Guattari and
                Serres|Prigogine|Stengers)
- Continental Philosophy|Postmodernism and Environmentalism
- The Ecology of 'Non-Equilibrium'
- Environmental Ethics
- Art d'Eco - Deleuze|Guattari and EcoArt (Land Art, EcoLiterature,
                etc.)
- The Convergence of Ecology and Politics
- Deleuze|Guattari and EcoFeminism

                          etc.

The deadline for abstracts|proposals is MARCH 15, and they should be sent to

Bernd Herzogenrath
Universität Köln
Englisches Seminar
Albertus-Magnus Platz
50923 Köln
Germany
Brundlefly_at_web.de
http: www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/englisch/berressem/herzogenrath/

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Received on Sun Feb 04 2007 - 13:30:08 EST